Smoke Rings

The Guiberson Radial Diesel

- Jim Allen

Think for a minute and you’ll realize a diesel engine can be built in any configuration. Inline, Vee, horizontally opposed, opposed piston and, yeah, even radial. By the 1920s, diesel and aeronautical mania were beginning to sweep all aspects of motorized endeavors in America and it was only a matter of time before the two fledgling technologies met, as they had already in other parts of the world.

The Packard Motor Car Company would be first in America to begin the development of a radial aircraft diesel in 1927. In 1929, a Texas oil man, Samuel Allen Guiberson, joined the parade when he teamed up with Austrian aeronautical engineer F.A. “Fred” Thaheld to do the same thing. They formed the Guiberson Diesel Engine Company in Dallas and Sam Guiberson would eventually invest $1.5 million in the development project. By 1931, Packard’s aero diesels were on sale and certified by the Aeronautics Branch of the Department of Commerce but slow sales and the Depression would force them to discontinue production. By the time Packard was done building radial aircraft engines in 1933, Guiberson had built two experimental radial diesels, the A-980 and the A-914, and was ramping up to do more.

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